


dance in the graveyards

by clarinetta



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Unresolved Sexual Tension, descriptions of death, not supper fluffy but i tried, this was meant to be a one-shot but i accidentally a whole backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 01:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12121893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta
Summary: John wraps his arms around Paul’s neck and lays his head on Paul’s shoulder, still swaying back and forth, slow dancing in only the strictest sense. Paul sighs and locks his hands together around John’s waist, pressing his mouth to the crook created by John’s neck and collarbone. (George sings the final verse, a repeat of the first, softly, like the falling action at the end of a story.)





	dance in the graveyards

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my friend pivoinesque, who mentioned that she loved that quote of Paul's where he says John liked "Girl of My Dreams" and made her think of Paul and John slow-dancing together. Combined it with post-apoc AU and here we are. Go look at her edits on tumblr, they're incredible.

_Sunset, October 9, 1961_

 

Paul dips his shoulder and lets his bag, heavy with a long day’s walk, slide down his arm and land on the concrete with a soft thump. He exhales with a sigh that seems to go on and on. His lung capacity is improving, he notes with a quirk of the lips that could almost be a smile. Before (with a capital B, as it will ever be in his mind, the world divided into halves Before and After), he had smoked like a chimney, and could hardly run around the block without collapsing in a dead faint. Now, with cigarettes (and every other comfort he had known) no longer being manufactured, he got along without. Now he can run; he can go like the wind with ten pounds of food on his back, and often has to, in order to keep what he’d managed to scrounge. Food, like everything these days, is scarce. You are fast or you are dead.

He checks to make sure he hasn’t been followed. The sun is setting quick, and he doesn’t want to be outside when darkness slips its hood over Liverpool. The road behind him stands empty and silent. Wild ivy crawls over every building in sight; weeds and waist high grass spread long fingers across what used to be the front lawn of a church. The sight of that lonely dead street would have frightened him a few years ago, would have made him want to cry; now he barely sees it at all, his eyes skipping over the destruction and decay, searching for threats. _Amazing,_ he thinks, catching himself; _amazing how quickly we adjust._

With the area clear, he crouches on his haunches and opens his bag, checking and rechecking the supplies he gathered during the day. It’s not much; supplies in this area are fewer and farther between these days, but he notes with some satisfaction the batteries and torch he’d found, the pack of biscuits (stale but incredibly delicious to Paul’s deprived palate) the blanket with surprisingly few moth-eaten holes and, best of all, the First Aid kit with everything still packed neatly inside. He unwraps the blanket to make sure John’s birthday present is intact, swishing his long hair out of his eyes. The whiskey bottle, a true prize left behind in some poor sod’s liquor cabinet, glints dimly in the dusky sunlight. Paul’s heart thumps with glorious anticipation. They have so few pleasures; things that would have been small comfort Before feel precious now, in the After, things to be considered and savored and relished.

A chill wind cuts through Paul’s bones. He shivers and pulls his frayed jacket tighter around himself. He hovers his fingers over each of their booby traps, well hidden in the grass and weeds. They’re mostly unnecessary, since they and the rival groups have pretty much staked out their own territories and are generally loath to venture into anyone else’s. Still, Paul supposes they are a comfort, their simple protection. As the sun disappears behind the ruins of his city, Paul shoulders his bag and turns up the path to the church.

.

“What’s the password?”

“Open up, it’s cold.”

“That’s not the password.”

Paul rolls his eyes. “The password is ‘Georgie is a twat for making us use passwords.’”

“Aye,” George says, “but a safe twat.” Paul hears the chains rattle as they unwind, and a moment later, the door swings open to reveal George, shaggy-headed and hollow-cheeked and grinning.

“John back yet?” Paul asks as he unpacks his meager findings and arranges them neatly on a set of cleared-off shelves near the front door.

“And a good evening to you too,” George says dryly. “He’s in the kitchen.” He peers over Paul’s shoulder. “What have we got here?”

“Torch, batteries, biscuits –" George makes a delighted noise and grabs the biscuits out of Paul’s hand – “a First Aid kit and another blanket for the pile.”

“What’s that, then?” George says interestedly, reaching for the whiskey bottle. Paul snatches it out of reach.

“Not for you.”

“What’s not for Georgie?”

Paul whirls at the sound of John’s voice, hiding the whiskey behind his back. John raises an eyebrow. “Your birthday present, old man,” Paul says. Now both of John’s eyebrows go up, confirming what Paul suspected: John had no idea what day it was, despite Paul’s meticulously kept calendar, hand drawn on scrap paper for the last three years.

John recovers quickly and immediately hunches over, squinting, hobbling toward Paul on an imaginary crutch. “Well let’s have it, then, son,” he croaks in his familiar imitation of an old woman. “What finery have you brought your old Nan this evenin’?” Paul laughs.

“Here you are, Grandmother,” he teases, and hands over the whiskey. 

John’s eyes go wide as he takes the bottle with careful fingers. “Bloody hell,” he breathes with perfect sincerity, too gobsmacked to hide his delight with bluster. “Where did you get this?”

Paul mimes closing a zipper over his lips. “Can’t give all me secrets away, can I?”

“Aye, you’re just hiding the rest for yourself,” John says, affection softening his voice. He stares hard at Paul, as though Paul is a maths problem he hasn’t yet solved. Then he surges forward and grabs Paul in a tight hug, so quick that Paul hardly has time to react.

“Oof,” Paul grunts, but he’s smiling, patting John’s shoulders. “Guess that means you like it?”

“Daft sod,” John murmurs.

“Happy birthday, luv.”

John hums warmly and lets go, holding the bottle aloft. “We’re going out on the lash tonight!” he whoops, and Paul and George cheer. Paul studies John’s face, alight and unburdened for the moment, and thinks in a flash how far they have come.

 

_Sunrise, May 11, 1958_

 

Paul woke up on May the eleventh, shivering under his thin quilt, to the sound of someone trying to break down the front door.

He knew it was May the eleventh because the last newspaper they had gotten had been two weeks ago, and the date printed on the top had been April twenty-eighth. (The headline screamed MEGA-VIRUS NOW WORLDWIDE, DEATH TOLL PROJECTED NEAR ONE FORTH OF POPULATION AND RISING in chilling block letters. Paul forgave the spelling error since, he reasoned, the paper was likely quite short-staffed by then.) Paul had been keeping his own calendar since May first, two days after the last newspaper. He worked on the calendar every free moment he could snatch, between caring for his father and Mike.

His father died later that week, on May fourth, convulsing as Paul squeezed his fingers with one hand and covered his own mouth with the other, swallowing screams of unspeakable horror. His brother had followed close on Jim’s heels as the sun slid below the Atlantic on May fifth. Paul had dug up the back garden two days later. He buried them on May the eighth and marked it on his calendar with meticulous handwriting. Although Liverpool seemed utterly deserted, he spent May ninth knocking on doors, all up and down Forthlin Road, then all around Allerton, silently begging for someone to appear and dispel that nagging, growing terror that he was the last human on earth. No one did. The next day he finished the last bit of bread they had--the heel of a half-stale loaf--got himself a glass of water, and crawled into bed, fully expecting to die there.

But now there was someone banging on his door.

He threw back the quilt and tiptoed downstairs on watery knees, trying to control his terrified breathing. Grabbing a knife from the kitchen, he crept into the front room. With the knife in his left hand, hovering at eye level, he stretched his shaking right hand toward the door. Then the banging stopped. Paul froze, the sudden quiet jarring him almost as much as the original sound. There was a beat of stillness. Then he heard something that nearly made his heart explode with hope and terror: a frustrated yell, low and despairing and achingly familiar, echoing across the silence of Liverpool.

Paul lurched forward, his breath a high-pitched whine, and wrenched the door open. John had walked about halfway down the path but he whipped his head at the sound, his eyes wild, hopeful. They processed the sight of each other for a half second and then John’s face collapsed and Paul felt his own face mirror John’s and they ran to each other, arms out, and collided in the middle, in their relief forgetting to hide their tears.

Hand in hand, Paul followed John back to Menlove Avenue, letting John babble and rant, his voice pitched up to a half-hysterical highwire, trembling on the edge of broken. He told Paul that he had seen someone moving in the bushes behind his neighbor’s house, but the person hadn’t shown themselves; he said that they couldn’t be the last ones, there had to be others who hadn’t caught sick, and maybe they could find them, maybe there were more than they thought, maybe it was just Liverpool that had gotten hit so bad; he rambled that he had always wanted to get out of Liverpool and maybe this was his chance. He talked and talked and talked until they reached Mendips’s front garden; then John’s voice died, trailing off mid-sentence. He stopped walking. The bones in Paul’s hand ground together as John gripped his fingers. The house loomed ahead; it seemed to watch them, with windows like black lidless eyes, motionless, waiting. Paul looked from John’s face to the house and back again, slowly realizing what John could not say: that Mimi was in there, in that lifeless place, dead and rotting somewhere, in the front room or tucked under the quilts in her bedroom, her mouth wide with her final attempt at a gasp of air, eyes open and glassy and sightless.

“Come on,” Paul said in a rusty voice. They were the first words he’d said aloud since his clumsy attempt at giving Mike the Last Rites, nearly a week before. He tugged gently where he and John were tethered. John shook his head, but Paul tugged again and took a step forward, into the garden, and John followed, his lips pressed together in a tight white line.

The buried Aunt Mimi together, behind the house, digging silently as the weak spring sun arced its course over their heads. As they turned over new earth, it felt to Paul as though they were turning some undefinable corner, crossing over into the unknown: what he would come to call, in his own mind, The After.

They found George a few weeks later, his face drawn and hollow and terrifyingly blank, squatting in his own dead house. There was no sign of any of his family members. George stared at the two of them with no expression, his hair shaggy and falling over his ears in limp, greasebound curls. He answered none of their questions--not out of rudeness or sullen refusal, nor out of a lack of understanding--their words seemed to whisper through him like ghosts, causing a small shiver, a flash of the eyes, but no more. Paul thought that it was like George was there, inside his body somewhere, but locked up tight with the key thrown out. John looked at Paul helplessly after several minutes, his eyes saying, _You know him better than I do. Please, do something._

Paul took a deep breath and stepped forward, arms out, showing that he meant no harm; he felt as though he was approaching a feral cat that might jump out and scratch at any moment. George did not jump out, but he curved away just slightly, hollowing his body to stay away from Paul. Paul took the hint and stopped. “We’ve got a place,” Paul said. He winced at the volume of his voice and lowered it a little. “It’s just near Mendips, about a block away from Strawberry Fields. You can come with us if you like. We’ll not turn you away.” No answer; just that tiny shiver, the flash of his dark eyes, there and gone.

Paul glanced and John, who shrugged. They turned and picked their way out of the cluttered little house, shutting the door gently as they left.

They had not made it two steps toward the sidewalk when George burst through the door and very nearly leapt into Paul’s arms, sobbing. Paul staggered but righted himself. George tried to speak but it came out jumbled, jagged with tears. It took Paul several moments to comprehend what he wanted to say: “I didn’t think you were real.”

Paul patted his back, bewildered but grateful; after a moment, John threw his arms around both of them, announcing loudly that he didn’t want to be left out, and they all laughed long and good.

 

_1961_

 

“To Paul!” John shouts. He raises his whiskey bottle high in a makeshift toast. Paul and George mimic with imaginary glasses, since they have all been sharing the bottle, forgoing such niceties as cups. The whiskey is two-thirds gone and Paul is feeling good and sloshed—his tolerance for alcohol has faded considerably in the past three years, as have George’s and John’s. John’s hand weaves in the air; George’s head is dipped to one side, like it’s too heavy to hold up. His face afire, John takes a swig from the bottle and passes it to Paul, who does the same and passes it to George. John attempts to clap his hands and misses, slapping his wrist instead. This strikes George as hilarious; whiskey dribbles down his cheek as he throws his head back, laughing. John gives George the V, one eye closed to look through his fingers.

“Right, lads,” John says loudly. His voice bounces off the vaulted ceiling. He leans back against the altar at the front of the sanctuary. Normally it is too dark in the sanctuary to see much of anything after sundown, but tonight the moon is full and bright and shines through the stained-glass windows, creating patterns on the floor, fracturing their faces with colored light. Paul reclines on the front pew and studies the ceiling, its curves and grooves. He wonders vaguely how the church was built.

“Paulie.”

“Wha?”

“I said truth or dare,” John says impatiently.

Paul groans. “Neither.”

John growls in the negative and crawls the short distance to Paul’s pew. He pokes Paul’s cheek repeatedly. “Come on, son,” he chides. “Come on! Don’t be shy! I say, Paul, don’t be shy!” He pokes Paul hard in the side and Paul jerks away, giggling uncontrollably.

“All right, all right,” he says through his grin. He pushes John’s hands away. “Truth.”

“Chicken,” John says, but his tone is fond. “If you could have any woman in the world, dead or alive, who would it be?” Paul rolls his eyes at the dull question, but John isn’t finished. “The only rule is: they have to be over forty.”

Paul strokes his chin. “Ingrid Bergman.”

“Rubbish,” George says hotly, “She isn’t either over forty!”

“She is, though!” Paul protests. “I read it in the papers! When everything started, the paper said it got her and she was forty-three!” He doesn’t have to clarify what “it” is. They rarely talk about Before, but when they do, it presents itself as a harmless epithet. _Everything. Thingy. It._ Surviving in the After is easier if they don’t talk about Before. But Paul is drunk tonight, and happy, and he won’t be held responsible for this anyway.

George stares at him with distrust, but Paul points at him, moving the game along. “Truth or dare, Georgie.”

“Truth.”

“What’s the weirdest place you’ve ever wanked?”

“Upper deck of a bus,” George replies, prompt. John makes an impressed sound. “There were other people in the upper deck too,” George adds. Paul slaps his arm, totally delighted.

“Our own little rebel without a cause,” John crows.

“Oh, I had a cause,” George says slyly. Paul nearly rolls off the pew laughing. “Right then, Johnny, truth or dare!”

“Dare.”

George grins. “Sing us a song in your best soprano.”

John shrugs and climbs up onto the altar, wavering back and forth like a leaf in a very gentle wind. “Requests?” he bellows with a slightly rolled “r”.

“Girl of My Dreams,” Paul shouts.

John colors a little; he likes to pretend he doesn’t like old songs. But he recovers and makes a big show of clearing his throat and primping his hair. Over Paul and George’s laughter, he belts out with ridiculous falsetto: “Dear, it seems years since we parted… Years full of tears and regret…” He smirks at Paul and hops down from the altar to serenade him. “I’ve been alone, _broke-and-farted_ …” Paul tries to stifle his giggles. “Trying so HARD” – here he mimes jerking off, and this time Paul does fall off the pew laughing, George following, his legs sticking up crazily– “to forget! Girl of my dreams, I love you—”

“Oh god, stop,” George guffaws, holding his stomach, “No more, Johnny, I’m gonna be sick.”

John bows deeply and plops back down on the floor, his rear end inches from Paul’s shoulder, with a satisfied gleam in his eye. He takes another slug of whiskey and says, “George, you’re up again.”

“Dare.”

“Lick Paul’s armpit,” John commands.

George makes the appropriate noise of disgust, pretending to vomit over the side of the pew, and Paul makes as if to hit him. “Go on, Georgie, it can’t be the worst thing you’ve ever tasted,” John urges. Then George dips toward Paul, lightning fast, and runs his tongue under Paul’s arm. Paul screeches and John laughs and George grabs the whiskey from John and drinks to wash the taste out.

“Paul,” George announces. “Truth or dare.”

Paul thinks for a moment. “Dare.”

“Catch that spider,” George points to one with spindly legs and a skinny body crawling lazily along the pew, “and eat it.”

Shrugging, Paul pinches two of the spider’s legs between his fingers, dangles it over his mouth, and savoring the amazement on his friends’ faces, swallows the spider whole. No one speaks for a long moment. Then George begins to clap. John joins him, his expression a cross between ‘impressed’ and ‘horrified.’ Paul smiles his most angelic smile and takes a drink. He’s drunk enough that the whiskey doesn’t burn too badly going down anymore.

There are a few more rounds. The game winds down a bit, and then it is Paul’s turn again.

“Johnny, truth or dare?”

“Truth,” he says with a stifled yawn.

With no idea what he’s going to say, Paul opens his mouth and the question tumbles out. “What do you miss most from Before?”

Immediately he wants to slap himself. George’s mouth turns down at the corners, his eyebrows shooting up in shock. But John seems to legitimately consider the question, as though Paul has not just dropped a brick in the middle of their drunken game. His brow furrows in thought. “Mimi,” he says very softly. George nods with sympathy. Paul, unable to think of anything to say, hands John the whiskey. He recalls the ghostly-white look on John’s face the day they buried Mimi in the garden, the exhausted curve of his back as they dug deep into the hard ground. He remembers, though he doesn’t want to, the nightmarish, unspeakable task of carrying Mimi down the stairs; of trying to be gentle as they laid her in the shallow grave they had made; of the final, indescribable thump of the last dirt clod that covered her. They’ve never spoken of it, never told George. It’s a horror too deep to name. He sees all these things on John’s face, feels it mirrored in his own. A deep, secret ache compresses his lungs, makes it difficult to breathe.

John turns his eyes up to George. “Truth or dare?” he says, and his voice only shakes a little.

“Dare,” George decides.

“Play us the song you’ve been writing.”

George blushes all the way to the roots of his hair. “I haven’t,” he mumbles.

“Now, now,” Paul chides, wagging a finger. “Don’t lie to your old Uncle Paulie, I’ve heard you practicing. These walls have ears, y’know.”

“’S’not done,” he protests, but John is already standing, stumbling over to the alcove where they keep their prized instruments, stolen from a music shop a few weeks into the first summer in the After. He grabs George’s guitar by the neck and brings it to their little circle. Reluctantly, George takes it with careful fingers and strums a chord. He tunes a couple of strings and begins to play, singing so softly that Paul leans forward to hear him.

“In spite of all the danger,” George whisper-sings. “In spite of all that may be, I’ll do anything for you—” he misses a chord, snorts angrily, strums the right chord a little louder, the mistake making him, strangely, more confident—“anything you want me to, if you’ll be true to me.”

John pokes Paul’s shoulder. “I dare you to dance with me.”

“It’s not your turn.”

John rolls his eyes affectionately. “Git.” He gets his feet under him and stands, offering Paul his hand. Paul takes it. As George moves into the second verse, his voice strengthening as he sinks into the song, John wraps one arm around Paul’s shoulder and clasps Paul’s hand. Smiling self-consciously, Paul rests his free hand on John’s waist. The ache in his lungs rises to his throat, forcing him to clear it to keep from choking. John takes no notice. He swings Paul around in a small circle as George plays on. John spins out, away from Paul, until their hands are the only thing connecting them; he spins inward until Paul catches him gracelessly, giggling. They’re closer now, noses almost touching. Suddenly John tightens his arms and dips Paul back, so that he can see George upside down, still absorbed in his guitar. 

“I’ll look after you,” George sings as John pulls Paul up. “Like I’ve never done before.” Paul feels his face flush. He isn’t giggling anymore, and neither is John. There’s something crackling between them, something they can’t name or see but it’s there all the same, warm, brought to the surface by the whiskey or the song or something else, Paul isn’t sure. He is suddenly certain, dead certain, that John is going to kiss him.

But he doesn’t. Instead John wraps his arms around Paul’s neck and lays his head on Paul’s shoulder, still swaying back and forth, slow dancing in only the strictest sense. Paul sighs and locks his hands together around John’s waist, pressing his mouth to the crook created by John’s neck and collarbone. (George sings the final verse, a repeat of the first, softly, like the falling action at the end of a story.) Paul’s eyelids droop, and he can feel John growing heavier in his arms, resting more and more of his weight on Paul as they enter the drowsy stage of their drunkenness. The thing between them dulls to a low flare in Paul’s chest and he can breathe again.

George finishes his song with a chord that sounds slightly off, and he clears his throat. “Bed for me, I think,” he mumbles, and weaves away, toward his little nest of blankets in the former minister’s office.

Paul and John are still swaying a little, just a slight shift from one foot to the other. Paul thinks John is asleep standing up until he murmurs, “Let’s go somewhere.”

“Like, to bed?” Paul snorts quietly.

John makes a noise in his throat. Paul feels the sound as a low vibration against his collarbone. “Somewhere,” John repeats with a small slur. “Somewhere else. A vacation, like.”

Paul, knowing that winter is coming for them, knowing that on some level that he shouldn’t indulge John’s whims (but knowing on an even deeper level - deep where that ache lives - that he would give John the whole world if he could, would follow him through the gates of Hell if he asked), says, “Got any place in mind?”

He feels John smile as he snuggles closer to Paul, as though trying to crawl into Paul’s skin. “How d’you feel about Paris?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thing 1: Yes, I know that In Spite of All the Danger was a Paul/George co-composition, don't @ me. If Nowhere Boy can fudge the history so can I.
> 
> Thing 2: This fic owes rather a lot to Stephen King. Primarily for the idea of a mega-virus being the end of the world (a la The Stand), but I've also been rereading IT and some of the turns of phrases and sentence rhythms found their way into this fic. So, thanks, Stephen.
> 
> Thing 3: Huge thank you to savageandwise for her suggestions for the Truth or Dare game, and for letting me bitch.


End file.
